Foodchain (26 page)

Girdler asked, “Absolutely. Then what will we shoot?”

“You all are hereby warned to be on the lookout for this dangerous gentleman here.” Sturm unrolled an 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper. The big monkey sat locked to the chair, wearing western clothing, in a primitive cheap two-tone print. In wooden, western-style letters, the sign said, “WANTED” above the monkey’s hat.

“I direct your attention to this particular detail here,” Sturm pointed to the monkey’s ears. “He’s got brass balls and brass earrings.” He pointed to the bottom of the sign, “ REWARD: $20,000.”

Sturm tossed the rolled up paper down the table. “That’s right. Twenty thousand dollars. That’s one bad monkey there. And he’s loose. Goddamn King Kong. Somewhere in town. So be careful. It’s a dangerous mission. So damn dangerous, I gotta be sure you’re serious. This particular hunt, this ain’t free. But the cost is next to nothing when you think about the twenty-thousand dollar reward on this outlaw’s head.” He stood behind his chair, only his shoulders and head visible. “So who’s up for a little outlaw hunting?”

* * * * *

The main course was brought out. Theo asked Gun, “Hey, you wash your hands before touching this plate?”

Frank did his best to ignore Theo, and just enjoy the food, but as soon as the plate was set in front of him, Theo grabbed it and switched it with his own plate. “There,” he said. “Now you can enjoy their spit. I know they spit in mine, and I ain’t gonna eat that shit.”

The Glouck’s faces betrayed nothing.

Frank switched plates with Chuck, who was still enjoying the effects of the tranquilizers to worry about anything as unimportant as tainted food.

Theo didn’t like it, but instead of pushing it with Frank, he poured his water on the ground and shook the empty glass at Ernie. “Hey. Hey water boy. Gimme some water. Now.”

Ernie picked up the water pitcher on the table and poured more into Theo’s glass without saying a word. For now, his fear of his mothers was overriding his hatred of Theo.

“Shit. You might have a career in this, if you work hard,” Theo said, took a drink, then poured the rest on the ground. “Now gimme some more.”

Gun stiffly poured ice water into Theo’s glass, like a robot whose joints had nearly rusted shut.

Frank did his best to ignore Theo; his mind wanted Annie. The curved shadows from the back deck were gone and the back yard was empty. He thought about excusing himself to go check on the lionesses, really just to look around and try and find her, but didn’t want Sturm to see him leaving the table.

* * * * *

Gun made it all the way through dessert before snapping. Theo had had too much beer. He said, “I know you’re half-coon, but even you can’t be that goddamn stupid. I told you I needed another fucking napkin, so hop to it…nigger.”

Gunther Ian Glouck was born at 8:56 AM, after 37 hours of labor. Edie was the only parent who signed the birth certificate. She’d been seen with over fifteen men during the two-week window of his inception, men of all ages, races. She refused to give the mens’ names, refused to give any information. He was three years younger than Edie’s next youngest and had learned very early that the only way to fight was dirty.

Gun snatched a fork with both hands from the stack of dirty dishes he was collecting, dropping the rest of the plates at the ground, and lunged at Theo. It didn’t matter that Theo was four years older and outweighed him by fifty or sixty pounds, Gun’s bottom teeth were bared, his eyes wild with fury. His left hand clawed at Theo’s face while the right came up all sneaky, aiming to puncture the lower intestine with the fork.

Plates hit the dirt and shattered. Two Glouck brothers materialized out of the darkness, grabbing Gun and wrestling him into the ground.

Theo jumped up. “Let him go! C’mon you pussies! Let’s do it!”

Asshole #2 started chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Assholes #1 and #3 joined in.

“Fifty bucks on the blond-haired kid, Sturm junior,” Girdler blurted happily, waving a bill.

“C’mon, you fucking pussy!” Theo shouted at Gun.

Ernie had a knee in Gun’s back. He turned and hissed, “Just cool down, you—”

“Ernie.” A mother’s voice, sharp as a rifle shot, cracked out of the tent.

Ernie turned back to Gun, rocked back a moment, and then punched Gun in the back of the head. Gun twitched and lay still, either genuinely unconscious or smart enough not to move.

“That’s enough, that’s enough,” Sturm said, rising to his feet, trying to get a better idea of what was happening down near the kitchen, since he wasn’t tall enough to see over the table. “We’re having a civilized dinner here. You can settle this later.” Frank suspected Sturm was afraid of Gun beating the shit out of Theo in front of the rest of the hunters, and couldn’t stand the shame of seeing his son lose a second fight to one of the Glouck family. A younger and smaller one too. “I’ve got other entertainment planned, something I believe you all will find much more interesting. I’ll meet you gentlemen out at the back of the barn. Frank will show you the way. I’ll be there before you’ve had a chance to refill them drinks.”

* * * * *

Frank led the group back to the lioness cage, still peeled white in the lights. Princess and Lady pressed into the barn corners, eyes shut tight, tails still. Only their ears moved.

A Glouck kid, the one with the stapled earlobe, ran out and took drink orders.

Everyone looked at Frank. He watched them back. Didn’t even bother to practice his smile. Asshole #2 coughed.

“Frank introduce you to the girls yet?” Sturm followed his voice out of the darkness, boots first, then black jeans, then a bare torso the color of a roasted almond, the grim slash of a mouth, and the black cowboy hat. The bandages were gone, revealing angry pink scars. You almost didn’t notice he was short until he came up to the cage and the top of his hat just barely rose above the shoulders of most of the men. “Well, Frank don’t say much, true, but he sure knows what he’s doing with my babies. He’s a goddamn Dr. Doolittle, no joke.”

Frank found his peculiar smile and saluted the men with his drink.

Theo came out of the barn and into the light of the corral leading Sarah. The old horse fought him all the way, stutter-stepping forward, her head up, eyes wide, clearly terrified. Theo jerked her along like he was trying to yank a large goose that was trying to take off back to the hard packed dirt.

Sturm took the reins, holding them at his hip, and kissed Sarah on the nose. The horse slowed down at once, the muscles sagged and relaxed. He whispered something low and sweet to her, got her to lower that long head even more, then kissed her between the eyes, and rubbed her ears.

He led her out into the dark field for a few minutes, then brought her back at the far end of the fenced corral. He unsnapped three padlocks and led Sarah inside. He kissed her nose again, and stepped back, shutting the gate and relocking the padlocks.

“Turn ’em loose, Frank,” Sturm called.

“What?” Frank shouted back.

“Turn ’em loose!”

“Who?”

“Who you think? Jesus Christ, boy.” Sturm caught himself. He laughed. “I’m sorry, son. Didn’t mean to lose my patience with you. I forgot you been touched, as they used to say. That horse kick to your noggin’ there. There, there over by your hand there. Open that padlock. Swing it wide, boy.”

And Frank finally got it. He figured out which padlock to unlock; it was a simple little thing really, a kind of gate mechanism, just grab it, push down, then pull back, and once he did, that would open a small, nearly hidden gate in the lioness cage, letting Lady and Princess into the larger corral, turning them loose on the horse.

Sturm hollered, “I got a fifty says my girls’ll take this horse under a minute.”

“You mean down or dead?” Girdler shouted back.

“Down.”

Having smelled horse sweat, the lionesses had finally opened their eyes.

“Done. I got a fifty on this horse going a full minute and half on all four feet.”

“Okay then. Do it.”

Sarah danced back and forth, looking for a clear way out, her movements growing increasingly sharper, more frantic.

“Open her up,” Sturm shouted. “My girls got to eat.”

Frank grabbed the metal, still warm from the heat of the day, pushed down and pulled back. The cats took a quick glance at each other and the rest of their cage and watched that horseflesh kick at the dust in the white hot glare of the lights. They slowly curled apart and slunk along opposite walls toward the open gate.

“When are we starting the clock?” Girdler asked.

“It’s already started,” Sturm said.

“What’s the time?”

“Where’s your watch?” Sturm held up a stopwatch. “By my count, it’s already fourteen seconds gone.”

“Well all right then,” Girdler said, checking his wristwatch. He’d been wearing it so long hair had grown up through the various holes and cracks in the leather band.

The lionesses watched the men at the fence closely.

Sarah kicked out, over and over. White lather from between her hind legs landed in the dust.

The cats’ wide noses, those flat cliffs of finely etched black leather, flared open, vacuuming the scent, bolting it directly into the very core of their predatory souls.

When it happened, nearly forty-two seconds after Sturm started his watch, it happened fast. The lionesses hit the gate together, then split apart, bounding at Sarah from both sides. She turned to face Lady on the left side, kicking wildly at Princess, who leapt completely above the flailing back hooves, sinking her claws into the horse’s back haunches, plunging great furrows into the old muscle, hanging there, letting the blood wash over the massive paws, snapping at the mane.

Lady went to the left, avoiding the bicycling front hooves, and as Princess hit Sarah from behind, Lady went for the throat. Her teeth snapped shut on Sarah’s windpipe. A smaller animal would have been killed instantly, but Sarah was over eight hundred pounds heavier than any bush antelope; her spinal cord was still intact. Lady swung from Sarah’s neck, dragging the horse down. The lioness’ teeth tore out Sarah’s right artery, and the horse went down, kicking and spraying blood.

The men cheered as Frank watched the fine dust sift over his boots.

“I got fifty-six seconds here,” Sturm said. Everybody else chimed in their times, but nobody had over a minute.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR

The next morning, the heat was somehow worse in town, as if all the pavement, bricks, cinderblocks, and concrete, having absorbed so much for so long, were now more like hot coals, radiating a much deeper and stronger heat back out into the sunshine.

Frank kicked himself for forgetting his sunglasses back at the vet hospital. The last few days, in the full sunlight, he would have to shake his head once in a while, because his eyes would lose focus, and eventually everything in his vision would shatter in a blinding white light, and when the world refocused, the light was reversed, as if he was looking at a photo negative. The colors shimmered and melted into switching, like getting stuck between channels on the hotel televisions. So he’d shake his head until the picture snapped back into full color, keeping the lights and darks in the right places.

* * * * *

Theo rolled Sturm’s pickup out of an alley running parallel to Main Street, behind the Holiday Market and it’s empty parking lot. He went painfully slow, just threw it in drive and didn’t touch the gas. He turned into the street, moving slower than most people walk. Of course, the street was empty. Except for the engine, and Chuck’s unrelenting conversation, the town was silent.

Chuck said, “I’m at this truck stop down in Reno, empty as all hell, sitting at the bar, chatting with the waitress. She was interested, I know she was, ’cause she got me a chicken fried steak and eggs for half the price. And I’m eating, and getting’ cozy with her, when this guy walks in and sits down right next to me. Place is empty, but he has to fucking sit next to me.”

Frank and Chuck rode back on the tailgate. Chuck’s legs swung aimlessly back and forth under the truck. Frank’s long legs would have been dragged along, so he was kind of walking along with the truck, taking long strides backwards. He took a long drink, then passed Chuck his flask.

Chuck took it, saying, “And I swear to God, I can see him in the mirror right? So in the mirror, he looks kinda’ sick, but that’s all, and when I turn to look at him, half his head is gone, from the nose on over, just gone.” He slapped his palms together to suggest skipping a rock over water. “And I look back to the mirror, and he looks…well, not fine, no, but at least his head is all there.”

A horse lead line was attached to the bumper. Fifteen feet down, at the other end of the line, was a ewe, dreadlocks of dry mud underneath, legs caked in gray mud, shuffling along, like a wobbly toy being pulled by a string.

Theo rolled across the crosswalk and into the Main Street intersection.

Chuck talked over the diesel engine. “And he turned to look at me, with that one eye left, and he said, ‘Don. Don.’ Then he got up and left.”

“Why?” Frank was bored shitless, wondering when the hell Chuck would get to the point and take a drink. Then maybe he’d give the flask back.

“Why? Fuck, you listening to me? The ghost, man. What are we drinking here? What the hell’s in this?” He shook the flask, spilling some of the whiskey. “You think I can get another injection of that shit? Haven’t felt that good in…ever.”

“I would. I mean, I’d like to. I would. But I can’t afford it.”

Chuck laughed. “Well. How much does this stuff cost?”

“I’m not sure. But I can find out.”

“You got more back at the office, right? You know, any tiny bit. Hell, it don’t take much. I can afford it. Hell yes—I can pay you! Jesus, don’t worry about that. I got paid. So I got it.” Chuck pulled a lump from his jeans and gave Frank a flash of his money, a good thick, tight roll of bills over three inches thick.

They rolled across Main Street. Frank was too busy looking at the pavement, pretending to remember how much he should charge, seeing that fat roll of cash in his mind, wondering when in the hell Sturm had seen fit to pay some employees and not others and barely trying to not listen to the voice raising the possibility of simply killing Chuck and that cash would be his.

So he didn’t notice the school bus, farther down. Sturm, Theo, Girdler, one of the Glouck boys, and The Assholes stood in front of the bus, lined up along the crosswalk.

Everyone had a rifle.

* * * * *

Frank said, “Five hundred dollars. That’ll buy you a damn good buzz tonight.”

“You got it.” Chuck peeled off five bills and slapped them into Frank’s hand, as the pickup finally rolled through the opposite crosswalk.

As the sheep crossed the center traffic line, the crack of a single rifle knocked Frank’s eyes into the swirling photo negative mode again.

The sheep was yanked off its feet and to the side, as if a giant invisible hook came out of the sky and caught it just behind the shoulder blades, catching on the bones and slamming it at the ground.

A cheer went up. Sturm raised his rifle.

Frank was so shocked he stood up, eyes locked on the dead sheep, nearly black in his eyes, now being pulled along by the lead line. The pickup rolled out from underneath him, unfelt and unheard. He suddenly looked up, and seeing the hunters aligned along the crosswalk, connections were made. He figured out that someone, probably Sturm, had shot the ewe. He went to sit back on the tailgate and fell on his ass.

The hunters roared.

Theo hit the gas, and tried to drag the corpse into Frank.

Frank jumped up and hopped over the sheep as it slid underneath him, painting the street like a sponge soaked in blood. Frank dusted himself off, and waved back at the hunters. Theo turned in a big circle, dragging the ewe around Frank, pounding on the roof, honking the horn, and generally having himself a good time. Chuck clutched at his belly, laughing all the while, his head swiveling around like a half deflated balloon of casing atop a sausage as he squinted through tears at Frank. “Sorry man, but that…that was fucking funny shit right there.”

Theo turned around and stopped. Chuck jumped off, shaking his head and giggling. He unbuckled the dog collar and joined Frank back on the tailgate. Theo took off, leaving the dead ewe in the middle of the side street.

Riding the tailgate back, Frank’s smile was more or less in place. After a while, he thought that if it hadn’t been him, it would have been pretty funny. And it wasn’t too long before he thought the whole thing was pretty funny, until they turned back into the alley.

He’d forgotten about the rest of the sheep. Twenty-five or thirty of them clung together like wet oatmeal, in the shade behind the supermarket. The fence was simply a roll of chicken wire stretched from the back wall out and around two dumpsters, forming a square.

Theo kept the pickup moving until Chuck was level with the corner of the fence. He jumped off, went up to the wall, and unhooked one end of the chicken wire. He grabbed a sheep, another ewe, by one ear, and threw the collar over her neck. He let go of the ear and grabbed the other end of the collar before the ewe could back away. He cinched it tight, buckled it, and dragged it out of the pen.

* * * * *

And that’s how it went. Theo would drive slowly out across Main Street, towing a sheep, and somebody down by the bus would be shooting like hell. Sometimes the shots would kill the sheep instantly, blasting it sideways two or three feet. By early afternoon, there was a thick trail of clotted gore the color of crushed pomegranates, covered in flies. Blood sizzled on the pavement, scarred with hundreds, maybe thousands of bullet strikes. The air smelled of blood and gunpowder.

For three hours, in the worst of the early afternoon, even the flies wouldn’t go out into the sun. They would cluster in curious stripes along thin strips of shadow that marked each tree limb, eating, shitting, fucking, and marching forward through the gore with the relentless snail’s pace of the sun.

Sometimes the shots weren’t even close, and Sturm had to step in and kill the ewe before it crossed Main Street completely.

Sometimes they’d blow the ewe’s head off and the collar would slip through the ruined skull and skitter along the sticky asphalt like a child’s pretend pet. Theo would stop the truck, back up, and Frank and Chuck would have to wrap the collar around part of the carcass, so they could keep dragging it along, and let the shooter continue blasting away at the target.

When this happened, it was really a two-man job. Most of the time, the neck was useless. Once in a while, if the sheep was skinny, they could buckle the collar in the hollow over the spine just in front of the back hips. That didn’t happen often. Instead, Frank usually had to lift the sheep by the front legs, while Chuck hacked away at the tendons and ligaments where those back hips were connected to the spine, slashing his way into the sheep so he could sink the collar deep into the wound, around the hips of the sheep and buckle it securely.

Frank always got nervous during these times, standing out in the street, hoisting the dead target, right in the middle of the shooting range. The shooters were undoubtedly drinking heavily, and you never knew when some drunk sonofabitch might just decide to take a shot at the sheep when Frank had it in the air, just for fun. The sun hammered down like a blunt nail into his eyes. Sometimes, when Frank’s eyes would blink over into seeing negatives, the blood looked like semen.

* * * * *

By noon the pile of sheep was as big as one of the dumpsters back at the sheep pen. By two, at the end of it, the pile nearly covered the street. Theo had to drive up onto the sidewalk, just to get around it. And they worked for hour upon hour in the blood and bullets and live and dead sheep.

Blue smoke rose above the town like smog.

Until finally, the last sheep was pulled slowly across Main Street. Theo must have been on his walkie-talkie, because everyone unloaded on the ewe. It exploded in a bright red mass of blood, bones, wool, innards, and brains. The collar slipped away, caught one of the front legs, and dragged what was left of the carcass away like a half digested bird skeleton through cat vomit.

Theo killed the engine and silence bloomed again. Frank and Chuck sat on the tailgate, staring dully at the pavement. Neither moved. The blood had crusted into a color of crushed red peppers on their clothes and skin, as if they’d been at ground zero inside a slaughterhouse, The flask had been empty for hours.

The hunters stowed their rifles back into the cases and ambled slowly down Main Street, rubbing their shoulders, talking loud over the ringing in their ears, and kicking the spent shell casings, which littered the ground like confetti after a ticker-tape parade.

Everybody was pleased as punch.

* * * * *

“Fine job, boys. Fine, fine job. I’d say our guns are good and sighted in,” Sturm said. Frank didn’t care if he was supposed to say something or not, or even if Sturm was talking to him and Chuck or the hunters or the sheep. All Frank wanted was to get back to the vet office, where he could wash the blood off and crack open a fresh bottle of rum. He practiced his smile amidst all the back slapping and yelling and joking but, really, he just wanted out of his clothes, out of his skin.

“Gentlemen,” Sturm called out. “Lunch is two blocks west. And beer.” He was slurring his words, but Frank didn’t think Sturm was drunk. Not yet anyway. This was different. Frank wondered if the tumor was doing the talking like the day when Sturm faced the lioness.

Frank shook the last guy’s hand and found Sturm waiting for him and Chuck and Theo. “Superb work, gentlemen. Simply goddamn superb.” He speech sounded normal, and Frank wondered if the suddenly dead tongue would come back. “You boys come on back and eat ‘til you bust, got it?” Sturm surprised Frank by tossing a bottle of Jack Daniels at him. Chuck got a bottle too.

“Well then. Get going, you two. You earned it, by God,” Sturm said, eyeing the vast pile of corpses. “Theo. Like a word with you.” Sturm went around the pickup and climbed into the front seat with Theo. Chuck was already halfway down the block, heading for the food.

Frank scratched at the blood and blisters on his head and followed.

* * * * *

The Gloucks arranged tables along Third Street, bordering the east side of the park, in order to catch the afternoon shade. They loaded the tables with sliced meat and long loaves of bread. Steak cut French fries with the skins still on. There was a whole table devoted to BBQ sauces alone, at least forty or fifty of ’em. Giant tubs of mayonnaise and mustard and ketchup, all soaking in ice. They’d raided the grocery stores down in Redding armed with several thousand dollars and damned near cleared the first few out.

It looked to Frank like they were prepared for more people, a lot more.

Everything sat in rapidly melting ice—The family had gone to the local supermarket for only two things during the chicken wire fence construction; the ice machine and horizontal freezer. It had taken the entire family to accomplish this, but now they had the ice machine running nonstop, filling it with water from the garden hose.

Three picnic tables were clustered in the shade down on the south side of the park. A shooting bench had been placed apart a ways, out in the sun; a large locked toolbox sat on top.

The hunters ate like they hadn’t seen food in two or three days.

Frank gave up looking for any kind of soap and simply plunged his hands into the icewater surrounding a bowl of honey mustard to clean them. The water calmed him right down, as if he just slid on his back out across a frozen lake at night. It felt so good that he splashed it back into his face, and more across his scalp. This was met with great enthusiasm and everybody tried it.